'HAMMERHEAD'......VERSUS HIS NEMESIS, SECRET AGENT BLOCKHEAD.......

 Hammerhead (1968)

         By now, BQ visitors are familiar with our undying passion for all those cheap, cheesy imitation Bond movies that flooded world cinemas throughout the mid to late 1960's......

          As derivative, dumb and mostly crummy as they were, we couldn't help gobbling them up like buckets of butter-slathered popcorn.....the guiltiest of our Guilty Pleasures. 

         Maybe it was inevitable that sooner or later, we'd come across one of these movies that we didn't like at all, one that just made our eyes roll in its overall incompetence and lack of any entertainment value whatsoever.

         Go figure. What irony. That this Eurospy stink bomb came from, of all places, the birthplace of Bond, Great Britain. 

          Supposedly the start of a series, 'Hammerhead ' came from producer Irving Allen, who'd had better luck producing Dean Martin's Matt Helm series and a slew of popcorn crowd pleasers he'd co-produced with Bond impresario Albert R.Broccoli.

          Filmed in sunny Portugal, we follow the ups 'n downs of secret agent Charles Hood, played by darkly handsome Vince Edwards, renowned as the volcanic raging Dr. Ben Casey on American TV.  Hood's on the trail of wealthy criminal mastermind Hammerhead (Peter Vaughn), who's about to pull off his most outrageous, nefarious plot. 

           Hood, as it turns out, isn't much of a sleuth or a deft secret agent.....he gets beaten up in fights and Hammerhead stays ten steps ahead of him through the entirety of the film.  And in rom-com fashion, Hood's constantly interrupted by the unlikely appearances of bubbly, bubble headed Manic Pixie Dream Girl Sue Trenton (Judy Geeson, once again proving she's the cutest of the batch of 60's Brit starlets.)

            The wily Hammerhead traps Hood and Sue in a coffin together and proceeds with his elaborate caper - stealing NATO secrets by substituting the British diplomat with a hammy actor famous for doubling celebrities. 

             Unlike other Eurospy movies (such as Irving Allen's own Matt Helms), this one's incapable of delivering either funny spoofery or breakneck action.  There's hardly any thrills and the attempts at humor fall so flat, you won't notice they're there. 

             Judy turns on the charm full force whenever she turns up, but Vince Edwards displays nothing of his 'Ben Casey' charisma. Also popping up (for nostalgia buffs) -  resident man-mountain David Prowse (the physical Darth Vader) and British Blonde Bombshell Diana Dors as a Hammerhead femme fatale. The voluminous amounts of makeup and eye shadow required to paint her face gave us a twinge of sadness for the ravages of time......

            We can usually manage to extract moments of craziness and fun in the many Eurospy romps we've viewed over the years. But not this one, though. 

            'Hammerhead' only made us regret the time we wasted on it. 

            1/2 of a star and that's only for Judy Geeson. Pass it by unless you're one of her most devoted fans.